The number to play tonight is 917, as in 9:17 p.m., which is when the state police emailed news that corrupt trooper Leigha Genduso “resigned” Friday night.

These crooked government agencies love Friday night “dumps” of bad news, but until recently, they’d shove out the odiferous press releases just before the end of business hours, around 5 o’clock.

But when you’ve got a hackerama as thoroughly rotten as the Mass. State Police, I guess it’s worth paying the flacks a few hours’ overtime to make sure the scandal du jour doesn’t make the early TV newscasts or the first editions of the Saturday papers.

The motto of the MSP has gone from “To Protect and Serve” to “To Protect and Steal” to “Nothing to See Here Folks, Move Along.”

Leigha Genduso, former live-in moll for a major drug dealer, ex-cocktail waitress at Scuttlebutts in Salem and until a recent barroom brawl the night bartender at the Osborne Tavern in Danvers, was eminently qualified for her $150,000-a-year gig as a state trooper.

She had, after all, admitted in open federal court under oath to a) kingpin-level drug dealing, b) perjury in front of the grand jury, c) income-tax evasion and d) money laundering for her gangster boyfriend.

The state police knew nothing. That’s their story and, like Sgt. Schultz, they’re sticking to it.

Their investigation of her sordid background, the MSP said with a straight face, was “thorough and complete.”

According to the MSP flack in the 9:17 release, “She did not disclose her past involvement in a drug dealing operation to any member of the Massachusetts State Police.”

That does not even come close to passing either the smell or the laugh test. She had been living with one of the top guys in the MSP, Daniel Risteen, for years. On the internet, there are pictures of the lovebirds together, in uniform and at cocktail parties with Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, who, like Genduso, just happens to be from Shrewsbury.

But we are told that Genduso never once mentioned to her boyfriend anything about her years of dealing (and abusing) drugs by the kilo? And her cop boyfriend never informed his best MSP buddy, Lt. Col. Francis Hughes, who was one of the three state hacks who sat in on her application interview?

Risteen and Hughes both acted in “The Departed” — you know, the film about crooked cops in Boston. As soon as Leigha’s criminal past was exposed by turtleboysports.com, Risteen and Hughes both “retired.”

As did their boss, Col. Richard McKeon, after getting busted trying to fix a case for the junkie prostitute daughter of a hack state judge. The “colonel” said it was no big deal, he broomed cases all the time, for the right people.

McKeon got his pension too — about $150,000 a year. For life. Tax free.

Can you imagine how much McKeon, Risteen, Hughes et al. know about where the bodies have been buried over the past 30 years or so? Institutional memory is always valuable, but when the institution is as corrupt as the MSP, it’s … money in the bank.

One of the most popular phrases of the week has been “hush money.” That’s what the president is said to have paid, through cut outs, to porn stars, to keep them quiet.

In Massachusetts, we have hush money too. It’s called “the kiss in the mail.”

The hack flack said the MSP have “recently created a new checklist for the background-check process.”

Translation: There’s finally going to actually be a background-check process.

I called Genduso yesterday but she didn’t return my calls. Ditto her Shrewbury BFF, Lt. Gov. Polito. Karyn was very, very busy at a fair in Cummington, a town I never even heard of until yesterday.

On Friday, a few hours before 9:17, I got a flier in the mail from Polito and her boss, Gov. Tall Deval Baker, in which they bragged about “Supporting Law Enforcement” and “Combating Drug & Substance Abuse at the Source.”

Combating Police Corruption Abuse at the Source — Tall Deval and Genduso’s BFF had nothing to say about that.

The 9:17 news dump came on the fourth Friday of August. There’s one Friday left before Labor Day, and guess what — the MSP just happens to have another embarrassment to dispose of before the primaries Sept. 4.

I refer, of course, to the thorough probe the MSP is no doubt conducting of allegations that Tall Deval’s son, A.J. Baker, got a little too touchy-feely with a woman on a JetBlue flight from D.C. earlier this summer.

If you’re betting, the over-under on the moment they release the news that Gropey has been totally exonerated is 9:31 next Friday night.

I’ll take the over — or should I say the after. After 9:17. After 11 o’clock and after the deadlines for the morning papers.

Howie Carr has written two New York Times bestsellers, is a member of the National Radio Hall of Fame and has won a National Magazine Award. He hosts a syndicated daily four-hour radio show, two hours of which are simulcast on Newsmax TV. His website is howiecarrshow.com.